Aspects of comparative literature

Abstract

The real development of literary criticism can be safely traced to the nineteenth century when is its profound search for freedom the romantic spirit established the autonomy of art in general from any other field of human experience. Literature became a secure point of reference to itself, an expression of the self, a sublimation of awareness. Hence criticism itself began to be defined accordingly and the triple distinction between literary theory, history of literature and textual criticism was eventually sanctioned as the complex but sole definition of all critical activities.